State Senator Curt Thompson's
Monthly News Letter
May 2011 Vol. 5
Hello My Friends,
I hope this newsletter finds you well. Spring is here in full swing and while most of us are paying attention to the news relating to the killing of Osama Bin Laden I still wanted you to have a wrap up of the 2011 legislative session, so you will know what is going on in our state as well. While we will be back in August for a special session to address redistricting, the vast majority of the work of the legislature for this year is over.
So what happened to address the problems our state faces? Well the 2011 Legislative Session may not go down as “historic”, but with it being the first legislative session of Governor Deal’s term it may be a “trend setter”, giving us an eye of what to expect for the next four years. If that’s the case, then expect future sessions to be drama filled (if you like the inside baseball of who runs the State Senate at any given moment) but perhaps not full of actual legislative work (there was a record low number of bills introduced and passed this year).
The key highs and lows of this session where few, but worth mentioning: The two most far reaching measures to pass were the slashing of the Hope Scholarship and the passage of an Arizona Copycat bill, HB87, which will likely cement Georgia’s reputation as anti-immigrant and cause costly litigation.
On the HOPE front, the cuts basically will create a situation where the HOPE scholarship will no longer pay for books and fees and will be a flat amount, about 80% of tuition for the 2011/12 school year. The real problem is that as time goes by and tuition goes up this will cover less and less. Within 5 years HOPE will cover less than 20% of tuition. A program that was once the envy of the nation was gutted. There were other proposals, a Democratic Proposal and one I made separately that both would have saved HOPE for the vast majority if not all Georgians, but the Governor considered this his signature issue. I remember when I first got elected to the House that I was told to beware of legislators and the Governor trying to “Help” you out with a bill or program. “Help” as opposed to help, usually meant gutting your bill or program. Here Governor Deal’s “saving Hope” looks a lot like the “help” I was warned about 9 years ago.
On the bright side the state’s HOPE funded pre-k program was by and large saved at least for this year by increasing class sizes.
Then we have the Tax Reform, which did not get passed. Actually modernizing the tax code was something that could have been a great help to Georgia. Unfortunately just as politicians in Washington balked in bipartisan fashion against President Obama’s deficit reduction commission Georgia politicians balked at the plan put forth by Governor Perdue and the Republican controlled legislature’s own hand picked commission. The final version of actual legislation amounted instead of a modernization of the tax code created in the 1930s to merely another tax cut for wealthy Georgian’s at the expense of the middle class and low income families. That nothing passed is probably good given the alternatives. Still Georgia will languish with a structural deficit of at least 1.3 billion a year even in good times if we don’t have the courage to fix this.
Probably the only major bright spot, and the only truly bi-partisan work of the legislature this session was the passage of the states Sunday alcohol sales bill allowing individual counties and cities to vote for themselves whether or not to permit sales of alcohol on Sunday in their areas.
Locally in our communities in the 5th District cityhood is all the rage. Bills to allow referendums to create a City of Peachtree Corners and annexations of additional county areas into Norcross and Lilburn all passed.
In light of the “do nothing General Assembly” I suppose that’s the best we could get is the chance to by a bottle of wine or a six pack and take it home to drink while we wait for the state to decide if it actually wants to work at job creation instead of dither. In some ways however Conservatives, Moderates, Progressives and Liberals may all agree that a do nothing legislature isn’t all that bad. Conservatives who want less government got it in the form of less governing, and the rest of us, afraid of the extremist element in the Republican Tea Party, are probably just as happy their folks in the majority weren’t interested in doing more.
I know that you have a lot of questions and of course this isn’t an exhaustive list of what went on in the Georgia General Assembly this year. So, that is why our May 21 Citizen Advisory Forum will be a legislative wrap up, where you and your friends and neighbors can ask questions and inquire about the status of any bills I didn’t highlight here. Please come to Café 45 South located on South Peachtree Street in historic Norcross from 10:30am to noon for coffee, food, fellowship and a discussion of what did and didn’t happen to help the state and our district during this year’s legislative session. As always, please consider inviting a friend or family member to this event and help others get involved in making our government work for us.
If you cannot make it on the 21st, of course you can also contact me with your issues and ideas by responding to this email, by emailing me directly at curt@curtthompson.com, going to my website www.makingyourvoicecount.com and taking my survey, or by simply getting on the phone and calling me at 404-643-2649.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Thanks for all you do.
Curt
|
|
|
|
Curt at April 2011 CAF meeting.
|
|
